For Presentations, Half As Long Is Twice As Good

Most business presentations stink. Period. They are bloated PowerPoint-laden ramblings that ignore audiences' key concerns and fail to tell a simple story. Here are 5 ways to make your presentations the happy exceptions.

By
Joey Asher

Here’s a New Year’s resolution that’s a lot easier than losing 10 pounds—and with the tough marketplace we face in 2013, it will make your business more competitive.

Are you a team manager or a sales director responsible for delivering weekly presentations to your teams? Do you lead conference calls with hundreds of employees listening in? Are you the CEO? If so, resolve to limit your presentations to no longer than 15 minutes—including Q&A. It’s not hard. And in today’s world of YouTube attention spans and tough decisions, your listeners will thank you.

Most business presentations stink. Period. They are bloated PowerPoint-laden ramblings that ignore audiences' key concerns and fail to tell a simple story. But in working with hundreds of executives in all industries over the last 15 years, I have identified a few keys to making your presentations the happy exceptions.

Half as long is twice as good.
There was a time when audiences loved long speeches. Massachusetts politician Edward Everett spoke for two hours at Gettysburg at a time when he was considered one of the nation’s greatest orators. Lincoln’s two-minute "address" was jarringly short for the time. In those days, long was fine. After all, no one was itching to return to the office to answer emails.

Today’s attention spans are shorter. The average YouTube video is just over 4 minutes (PSY’s "Gangnam Style" is 4 minutes 13 seconds and has nearly a billion hits). And does anyone really listen to those windy political convention speeches?

About the only place where audiences of any kind sit in one place for more than an hour is the movie theater. And, the only place where today’s business audience willingly sits for long presentations is for a keynote address of a major speaker at a conference or for the company’s CEO delivering an annual meeting speech. Even then, how many of the audience members are actually paying attention, and not checking their smartphones for email, or chattering amongst themselves quietly in the background? Probably more than the conference speaker or CEO would wish, I am sure.

With that in mind, I constantly tell clients to "cut it in half." In our programs, we make our clients create presentations advocating for a business change. Almost all of them can be done in seven to 10 minutes. And that’s before taking questions. That’s just right for today’s time-challenged listeners and hectic work schedules.

Grab the audience like Spielberg.
We could all take a lesson in how to quickly grab the audience’s attention from Steven Spielberg. His masterpiece Jaws opens with a girl getting eaten by a shark. No background on the town of Amity—just a girl swimming in the surf and becoming dinner. The rest of the film is about resolving the problem of the man-eating shark.

Your presentations should start the same way. Don’t open with a bunch of background on how you did your research and what were your assumptions. No one cares! And if they do, they can ask during the Q&A.

Instead, cut right to the "shark," the key challenge that faces your listeners and your business. "We’re charged with increasing revenues by $10 million in six months. I’m going to talk about how we’re going to do it." That’ll grab their attention without wasting time.

Make the body of your presentation pass the $300,000 challenge.
Let’s say you’re about to give a presentation to 20 people. Before the presentation I offer you $300,000 cash and say "You can have the money under one condition. After your presentation, I will approach three people from the audience and ask them to repeat to me your key messages. If all three can do it, you win the money."

If those are the conditions, you will limit your presentation to a few key messages. You’ll keep the messages short. And you’ll repeat them many times.

Any good presentation should leave the audience with a few memorable messages. And it’s not hard to do. Just ask yourself, "What are the three things that my audience must remember?"

I was working with a health insurance executive as he was preparing a presentation on the value of managed care. When I asked him to list the three things his audience must remember, he didn’t hesitate. The plan would:

Save money

Improve the quality of health care

Allow for greater coverage for underserved populations.

Focusing on three points is a simple, highly effective approach. Regardless of how complex the topic, it always needs to be boiled down to three exact points, or your material becomes irrelevant to your audience.

Leave lots of time for Q&A.
Q&A is duct tape for presentations. It fixes almost everything.

Presentation boring? Cut it in half and leave the extra time for Q&A. Greater interactivity improves every presentation. Having trouble persuading? Take more questions. If you answer them well, you’ll convince the skeptics. Worried that you’re leaving too much out? Q&A lets the listeners decide.

Q&A puts you in touch with the audience’s needs. I once helped the head of a supply chain for a large retailer. He was stumped as to how to simplify his complicated topic for 3,000 store managers.

I suggested "Take the three questions that managers ask you the most. Put them on a slide. Then answer them one at a time."

The three questions were:

1."How are you working to improve our in-stock position?"
2."How can you be more responsive to the stores?"
3."How can you communicate with us more effectively?"

Jobs wasn’t alone in his feelings. I worked with the presenters at a sales meeting where the sales VP banned slides, forcing all speakers to get creative in the way that they illustrated their messages.

Most presentations need no more than five to 10 slides. Certainly if you have a 40- to 50-slide PowerPoint Death Star, you need to do some soul searching.

That soul searching should take the form of figuring out how to focus your message on your audience’s key issues, tell your story quickly by focusing on a few key points and take questions. Lots of questions!

Bottom line: Keep your presentations to 15 minutes—including Q&A. It’s a New Year’s resolution that will help your business and one your audience will be glad you kept.

—Joey Asher is president of Speechworks, a selling and communication skills coaching company in Atlanta. His fourth communication skills book is "15 Minutes Including Q&A: A Plan to Save the World From Lousy Presentations."